Marijuana Blog

On Friday, U.S. Attorney John Walsh's office issued letters to the owners of 10 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado that are within 1,000 feet of schools notifying them that they have 45 days to shut down, move their business or face federal enforcement action.

According to 7News, the 10 shops that got the letters are in the Denver metro area and in southern Colorado.

This is the third wave of letters Walsh has sent out to Colorado dispensares deemed too close to schools. In January, the first round of letters were sent to 23 medical marijuana businesses and in March another 25 letters were sent out.

After an order to shutdown one marijuana shop was withdrawn when the shop pointed out that the school it was near was no longer in use, a total of 47 of Colorado's medical marijuana dispensaries have now been shuttered since the crackdown began in January in what has become the most aggressive law-enforcement action against the medical marijuana industry that the federal government has pursued in the state.

Walsh's office cites the Controlled Substances Act, title 21, section 860, a federal law which references the 1,000 foot boundary for manufacturing or distributing a controlled substance near a school or college, although nothing in Colorado's medical marijuana law specifies the distance between a shop and a school, the decision, like most such zoning matters, is left to local communities.

"I can see no legitimate basis in this judicial district to focus the resources of the United States government on the medical marijuana dispensaries that are otherwise compliant with Colorado law or local regulation," Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett told Walsh in a recent letter. "The people of Boulder County do not need Washington, D.C., or the federal government dictating how far dispensaries should be from schools, or other fine points of local land use law.”